How Stacey and Ryan transferred their teaching expertise to launch an Oxygen Yoga & Fitness in a cold market.
Before discovering Oxygen Yoga & Fitness, Stacey and Ryan were both teachers in London, Ontario. So how did they go from there to opening a franchise in Sandy Springs, Atlanta? We chatted with them to hear about their journey, how they’re balancing teaching with running a business, and how they’re opening a business from across the US-Canada border.
For Stacey, staying in teaching until retirement was always the plan. She found yoga and fitness classes were a great reprieve from the pressure teaching sometimes brings.
“Our days can be super stressful. So it was a nice way for some grounding and calming,” Stacey shared. But, as Stacey explains, changes in the education industry mixed with some inspiration from Ryan’s business mindset led her to consider other options.
“Teaching’s not like it used to be. Like, we both still love teaching, but it’s really, really hard on your mental health,” she shares. Taking classes at Oxygen Yoga & Fitness was one way she addressed that challenge.
Ryan grew an interest in bodyweight exercise during his time playing college hockey. “The training was really grueling, and it was hard on a lot of people, injuries sustained, things like that.” As research started coming out about the benefits of bodyweight workouts like pilates and stretching, he turned to these workouts. Stacey then introduced him to Oxygen’s classes.
When considering starting a business of their own, Oxygen Yoga & Fitness came to mind.
“I think we were at our cottage one day, talking about, ‘Oh, we should open the business. So at one point, it was ‘let’s open a restaurant up here in Grand Bend, or let’s, you know, just anything like that. And then, we’d been going to Oxygen, and one of us said, ‘Why don’t we open our own Oxygen?’” Stacey explained.
What started as a fun idea sank in and became real. Stacey paired her twelve years of customer service experience with Ryan’s entrepreneurial spirit and both of their teaching expertise, and they decided to jump in and get a studio.
The concept of Oxygen, specifically its infrared heating and inherent community-building, stood out to Stacey.
“There’s so many fitness studios,” Stacey said. “Like, there’s so many many options. The heated aspect of Oxygen […] it brings something else to your workout. […] And the other thing too is I love the aspect of it’s just fitness class-based. […] We could open up a gym, but a gym does not have that community feel.”
Ryan shared that it also stood out as they were meeting with the Oxygen team that “Every person that we met along the journey was a strong female. […] It had a different element and touch behind it that I appreciated.”
Ryan added, speaking of the career pivot, “Another part of it that is that I like the idea of modeling to my kids […] that we’re not defined by our role. I think it’s really easy in life to just say you’re this because you do that, but that is a part of me, but there’s also this part.”
Ryan and Stacey have modeled this ideal, balancing their teaching jobs with getting into business with Oxygen. But as Ryan and Stacey explored opening an Oxygen Yoga & Fitness studio of their own, they discovered they were far from the only people who loved Oxygen in London. In fact, enough studios already existed in their local community that they decided to look wider for the perfect location for their studio and ended up deciding on franchising the Atlanta region. Their first studio will be in Sandy Springs, Georgia.
“Our sales numbers right now predict to be the biggest cold opening in the US, which is fantastic,” Ryan shared.
The way they’ve managed to connect with their clientele from another country is one of the things Stacey is proudest of so far. Reflecting on the decision to open the studio, Stacey advised, “If I were to say to someone who might be on the fence about opening a franchise, yes, it is definitely probably the scariest thing I’ve ever done. It’s a big chunk of money. And obviously bein in a cold market, it’s a little bit scarier. […] I remember saying to Ryan that like, if we don’t do it, someone else is going to do it and they’re going to be successful, right? And I want to be that success story. I want to be that example that, you know what, we took a risk and look at it, it paid off.”
For Ryan, the most rewarding part of the journey has been realizing how many transferable skills they’ve been able to bring with them from the education industry.
“I think the thing that has been most surprising through our journey is to see how much it does mirror itself a lot to education. Obviously, these are teachers that are teaching their students. And, uh, Stacy and I are both in mentoring roles within our board. And this is a lot of similar, like, skill sets that would bring forward.”
You can try Ryan’s favorite classes, 02 Pump, or Stacey’s Fast and Fusion and 02 Pump at an Oxygen Yoga & Fitness studio near you. And if you think franchising a location might be the right career pivot for you too, please reach out to our team!